Several factors likely play a role. One may be that volunteers have a better social network, which has been associated with lower mortality, according to the study.
Volunteering also seems to be associated with "self-efficacy" or a belief in people's own abilities to accomplish certain tasks, and people who have higher self-efficacy may believe themselves more capable of accomplishing those tasks, said the study.
"Staying healthy requires doing different things like quitting smoking or losing weight," said the study's lead author Sei Lee, an assistant professor of geriatrics at the University of California, San Francisco.
Although previous research has already shown an improvement in mortality rates among people who volunteer, the authors noted that past research has focused on people born before 1920, and that those studies haven't adjusted for all of the potential variables, such as socioeconomic status or chronic health conditions.
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Editor:Yang Jie
